a. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus for unloading poultry from cages.
b. Prior Art
It is known to utilize, for the purpose of transporting poultry from the broiler house to the poultry processing plant, cages having doors which serve as a sidewall of the cage. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,621,618 and 3,797,460 disclose banks of cages in which poultry may be transported. These cages are provided with doors in the sides thereof, so that the bank of cages can be inclined to simply pour the birds out of the cages onto a conveyor which carries the poultry into the processing plant. The disadvantage of this arrangement is that birds are frequently bruised as a result of the fall from the cage onto the conveyor, especially those birds falling from the upper cages in the bank. The conveyor may be provided with a fixed slide, as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,797,460, but this does not solve the problem, since the birds from the upper cages still fall a considerable distance and even those birds in the lower cages may fall an undesirably long distance if the cage doors are opened too soon. The result of this is bruised birds and lost profits.
It would be desirable to have poultry unloading apparatus for a bank of cages where the distance the birds fall is limited, regardless of the cage the bird comes from and the positioning of the cages at the times the cage doors are opened.